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Professor McGonagall looked round at Harry, frowning slightly.

“Very well, then, Potter, you tell the Headmaster about it.”

“I… well, I was asleep…” said Harry and, even in his terror and his desperation to make Dumbledore understand, he felt slightly irritated that the Headmaster was not looking at him, but examining his own interlocked fingers. “But it wasn’t an ordinary dream… it was real… I saw it happen…” He took a deep breath, “Ron’s dad—Mr. Weasley—has been attacked by a giant snake.”

The words seemed to reverberate in the air after he had said them, sounding slightly ridiculous, even comic. There was a pause in which Dumbledore leaned back and stared meditatively at the ceiling. Ron looked from Harry to Dumbledore, white-faced and shocked.

“How did you see this?” Dumbledore asked quietly, still not looking at Harry.

“Well… I don’t know,” said Harry, rather angrily—what did it matter? “Inside my head, I suppose—”

“You misunderstand me,” said Dumbledore, still in the same calm tone. “I mean… can you remember—er—where you were positioned as you watched this attack happen? Were you perhaps standing beside the victim, or else looking down on the scene from above?”

This was such a curious question that Harry gaped at Dumbledore; it was almost as though he knew…

“I was the snake,” he said. “I saw it all from the snake’s point of view.”

Nobody else spoke for a moment, then Dumbledore, now looking at Ron who was still whey-faced, asked in a new and sharper voice, “Is Arthur seriously injured?”

“Yes,” said Harry emphatically—why were they all so slow on the uptake, did they not realise how much a person bled when fangs that long pierced their side? And why could Dumbledore not do him the courtesy of looking at him?

But Dumbledore stood up, so quickly it made Harry jump, and addressed one of the old portraits hanging very near the ceiling. “Everard?” he said sharply. “And you too, Dilys!”

A sallow-faced wizard with a short black fringe and an elderly witch with long silver ringlets in the frame beside him, both of whom seemed to have been in the deepest of sleeps, opened their eyes immediately.

“You were listening?” said Dumbledore.

The wizard nodded; the witch said, “Naturally.”

“The man has red hair and glasses,” said Dumbledore. “Everard, you will need to raise the alarm, make sure he is found by the right people—”

Both nodded and moved sideways out of their frames, but instead of emerging in neighbouring pictures (as usually happened at Hogwarts) neither reappeared. One frame now contained nothing but a backdrop of dark curtain, the other a handsome leather armchair. Harry noticed that many of the other headmasters and mistresses on the walls, though snoring and drooling most convincingly, kept sneaking peeks at him from under their eyelids, and he suddenly understood who had been talking when they had knocked.

“Everard and Dilys were two of Hogwarts’s most celebrated Heads,” Dumbledore said, now sweeping around Harry, Ron and Professor McGonagall to approach the magnificent sleeping bird on his perch beside the door. “Their renown is such that both have portraits hanging in other important wizarding institutions. As they are free to move between their own portraits, they can tell us what may be happening elsewhere…”

“But Mr. Weasley could be anywhere!” said Harry.

“Please sit down, all three of you,” said Dumbledore, as though Harry had not spoken, “Everard and Dilys may not be back for several minutes. Professor McGonagall, if you could draw up extra chairs.”

Professor McGonagall pulled her wand from the pocket of her dressing gown and waved it; three chairs appeared out of thin air, straight-backed and wooden, quite unlike the comfortable chintz armchairs that Dumbledore had conjured up at Harry’s hearing. Harry sat down, watching Dumbledore over his shoulder. Dumbledore was now stroking Fawkes’s plumed golden head with one finger. The phoenix awoke immediately. He stretched his beautiful head high and observed Dumbledore through bright, dark eyes.

“We will need,” Dumbledore said very quietly to the bird, “a warning.”

Читайте також:

1. A blank silence greeted Hermione’s words. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.
2. A door to his left flew open and Professor McGonagall emerged from her office looking grim and slightly harassed.
3. A few moments later, Mr. Weasley came into the warm living room carrying his dinner on a tray. He looked completely exhausted.
4. A few of the centaurs looked worried now. Hermione, however, gave a gasp.
5. A few people looked around. Rita Skeeter’s eyes widened behind her jeweled spectacles as she saw who had spoken.
6. A gale of laughter from the middle of the table drowned the rest of Bill’s words. Fred, George, Ron and Mundungus were rolling around in their seats.
7. A large group of people was bunched around the bulletin board when they returned to the common room.
8. A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.
9. A young witch with short blonde hair poked her head around the curtain; Harry saw that she too was wearing magenta staff robes.
10. After glancing once at this portrait, Professor McGonagall made an odd movement as though steeling herself, then rounded the desk to look at Harry, her face taut and lined.
11. Almost against his will he glanced from Ron to Hermione, both of whom looked devastated.
12. An aged witch stood in front of him, holding a tray of what looked horribly like whole human fingernails. She leered at him, showing mossy teeth. Harry backed away.

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